Ranking Boost Plan Feedback

Will this work? Has it been done before? Any suggestions?

[thedagda]

One of my customers (we are a wholesale company) as approached me with a plan to ‘lock-up’ the top spots on the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN). I personally feel that, while the plan will help us in the rankings, it is impossible to lock-up or guarantee any rankings. I would like to get all of your feedback on the proposal.

The basic idea is that we have a group of 200 or so companies that have websites. We are in a fairly small market (at least in the States). Each of those 200 companies have a website that carries basically the same type of information and keywords. Each of these sites will be linked to each other and to a central ‘directory’ website. We are going to target a specific number of keywords (10 or so) that are the most popular for our market. Each of the 200 sites will target this key work in their SEO.

The guy who brought this up feels that because of the smaller market, the relevance of the linked sites to the keywords being searched on, and the amount of links to/from each site, that we should be able to take over the top 10-20 pages with those 200 companies – depending on how many of the 200 actually sign-up for the project. There are no other competitors in the market that can band together and get this type of unified message and link trade together.

The basic question is – will this work? Are we wasting our time, or is it reasonable that we corner the market in the keywords that we target? What kind of maintenance will need to be done to sustain those rankings?

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. I want as many opinions on this project as possible before I sink too much time into working on it.

Thanks,

Conor

[KevinC]

well with 200 companies - it looks to me that 190 of those companies are going to be pissed with sub "top 10" rankings.

[thedagda]

Well, the idea is, once we get the top positions locked up it will be up to them to optimize their sites to get ranked higher.

The thought is that they would rather compete with each other, than with their competitors.

conor

[arrowman]

The thought is that they would rather compete with each other, than with their competitors.

Indeed! Whatever you do, do not compete with your competitors. It's also unwise to cooperate with your business partners or to mary your future wife.

Compete with your partners, mary your competitors and ask your fiancé to cooperate.

[thedagda]

At the moment, I'm not very concerned about how the companies involved are going to react.

What I need to know is, in your opinion, regardless of human feelings being hurt, will this work? Or am I running the risk of being dropped as a spammer?

Thanks,

Conor

[ZopeMaven]

I think a good rule of thumb is "If you are asking yourself if you are running a risk of being banned as a spammer, then you probably are."

[thedagda]

Normally I would agree. However, in this case, it seems that it is all legit. All we are doing is banding together a number of like minded sites and linking them together. I don't see how this woudl break any rules.

Conor

[steve40]

Remember this is not only rules in G but an algo
so even though you may be doing something not against the RULES , the algo may just see it differently , this could end up as all the sites being seen as belonging to a linkfarm by G and everyone being dropped i am sure the competition would laugh all the way to bank .
when you combine linking with the heavy SEO that will occur for each site competing with others
steve

[nuevojefe]

You're creating a monster.

[thedagda]

After the warning from this site and another SEO site, the plan has mutated a bit. I think we are going to go with a 'directory' approach, split up by state. We will then have the 200 sites link back to the directory. For their individual rankings, we will simply educate them on some of the more simple SEO approaches. It will be up to them to implement them.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Conor

[caveman]

>>going to go with a 'directory' approach, split up by state...

Wise decision, for both business and algo reasons. The cross linking scheme was unnecessarily high risk.

[scoreman]

>>Wise decision, for both business and algo reasons. The cross linking scheme was unnecessarily high risk.

Why would this have been a high risk scheme? Unless they were planning on using the same link list on every one of those sites, I dont see why the cross-linking wouldnt have worked. Maybe 10 links here, another 10 on another page... The directory listing should work just fine though. GL

[glitterball]

I also think that this idea would have worked in theory.

In practise, getting 200 competitors to link to each other might be a tad difficult.

If you did go through with it, it would probably just push the irrelevant sites further down the SERPS.
In the long run, it would probably do little more than improve the quality of serps for those keywords.

I would like to see this happen and watch as the individual companies fall out with each other and not stick to the plan ;-).

All IMHO

[thedagda]

Well, the original idea was actually to use the same link list on all the sites. The new plan will break the list down to 10-20 per site.

I wasn't aware of link farms when I first started this project, but the fine folks around here told me in no uncertain terms not do do it.

[thedagda]

Actually, we are in a unique position with our customers on this one. They have all joined this current group with the goal of working together to improve everyone overall. They go so far as to share leads for jobs and the success/failures on their marketing plans.

They are actually a pretty tight group that is spread out through the country, all dedicated to the program. In-fighting over this is a very small concern.

[scoreman]

Ah, now that makes more sense :D Stick to the new plan. The link list wouldve been a high risk approach, hehe. (Didnt know that lil piece of info before posting my last response)